Kate Middleton & Prince William Have Fun At Christmas Party With Snow Machine & Santa

Prince William, Kate Middleton and Prince Harry launch new film series

The series is part of their Heads Together campaign

Words by Megan C. Hills

Opening up about mental health can be hard, but Prince William, Kate Middleton and Prince Harry’s latest efforts aim to make the conversation a little easier. As part of the royal’s Heads Together campaign to fight the stigma around mental illness, a short film series named #oktosay has been released. It features twelve interviews with mental health sufferers, including rapper Professor Green, and focuses on the moment they reached out for help.

‘When you realise that mental health problems affect your friends, neighbours, children and spouses, the walls of judgment and prejudice around these issues begin to fall. And we all know that you cannot resolve a mental health issue by staying silent,’ the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge said in a joint statement.

Spanning different conditions, people and relationships, the series encourages individuals not to suffer in silence with the tagline ‘Two heads are better than one’. Each deeply honest chat shines a light on why it can be difficult for people vocalise their mental health struggles, as well as why it’s important to do so to look after yourself.

The royals’ celebrity mental health videos include Alistair Blair, former director of communications to Tony Blair, who said he ‘couldn’t talk’ at the height of his alcoholism with consequent breakdowns that included an act of self-harm where he began punching himself in the face in public. In another video, model Adwoa Aboah spoke to her mother Camilla Lowther about hiding her depression (which led to a suicide attempt) and how in hindsight she couldn’t ‘believe it was that simple’ to receive help once she’d opened up about her condition.

Professional footballer Rio Ferdinand and his agent Jamie Moralee also spoke openly in one video about the sportsman’s bereavement, following the death of his wife Rebecca Ellison from breast cancer in 2015.